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"The Losers" an action film for ADD sufferers
Reuters - Friday, April 23
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By Kirk Honeycutt
LOS ANGELES - "The Losers" is a cartoonish nonstop action movie in which characters zip around the world, breaking, entering and blowing things up without any pretense to logic.
It's a world devoid of any geopolitics, connective tissue, human backgrounds or ideals other than greed and self-preservation. It is, of course, a Warner Bros. actioner adapted from a comic book series. Characters are two-dimensional, but the actors all play them with vigor, each focusing on a single outstanding feature of his character, so their interplay within the bullet-splattering sequences has resonance.
"Losers," opening Friday, should serve as a moderately successful seat-warmer for Warners before the onslaught of summer. The film never is boring, but it's never engaging, either, because its heroes hit every target in sight, while the villains, despite holstering much greater weaponry, never hit anybody. So forget about suspense.
Working from a blueprint -- screenplay would be the wrong word -- by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt, based on comic books written by Andy Diggle, illustrated by Jock and published by DC Comics/Vertigo, France-born director Sylvain White keeps things moving at video-game speed.
Indeed, the film seems to start in the middle of a scene, with five Special Forces ops horsing around in the jungle before a mission. The film freeze-frames each guy, giving us his nickname and specialty. Do you like your heroes to have such names as Clay, Jensen, Roque, Pooch and Cougar? Of course you do.
Their mission seems strange: They have to move close to a jungle hacienda of a Bolivian bad guy, then call in a military airstrike to blow it sky high. The complex seems pretty wide open to the casual observer, but one guesses the CIA likes to have its people nearby during all illegal covert operations.
It turns out the whole thing is a double cross with a rogue American agent targeting them as well. Believed dead -- apparently the CIA doesn't believe in looking for body parts -- the five "losers" are desperate to reclaim their old identities and get revenge on a guy named Max .
Enter Zoe Saldana's sultry Aisha. She introduces herself to team leader Clay sharp-shooting, the superbaddie doesn't stand a chance.
Max is a villain in the James Bond mode, only much sillier. To his credit, Patric plays him for laughs. His henchman, Wade , is lethal but rather dopey.
The movie moves on to Dubai, Mumbai, Miami, New Mexico and Los Angeles without ever actually leaving Puerto Rico. Scott Kevan's cameras are in constant motion, and editor David Checel cuts fast and often. For all the film's speed, though, it never seems to get anywhere. By the way, the producers have left the door open for a sequel.
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